Political Quotes

“there are two things wrong with the Republican prescription drug bill. Perhaps more than just two but two I wanted to talk about this evening. The first is this bill would privatize the program. It would privatize the prescription drug benefit and it would privatize Medicare itself. The second thing wrong with the Republican prescription drug bill is that it would actually forbid, prohibit, any negotiation by the government with pharmaceutical companies to bring down the cost of the drugs. Now, let me address the first question. Privatization of this proposed drug benefit is a very bad thing. It would, instead of establishing a drug benefit in Medicare, a guaranteed benefit set by the government, responsible to the Congress as all of the rest of Medicare has been situated and constituted for the past 40 some years, the Republican plan would set up a prescription drug plan through private insurance companies and HMOs. Now, those companies have a pretty bad track record in terms of delivering the same product year after year at the same price. In fact, they do not.”